In an information-rich computing environment, a user may create a variety of information or data. For example, the user may create or receive electronic mail. The user may create task lists of critical items that must be completed by certain dates. The user may also create a calendar of appointments. This data may be created by one or more programs such as an electronic mail program module or a calendar program module.
It can be time-consuming for a user to get a complete summary of their most important information, such as their latest electronic mail, their current tasks to be performed today, and what appointments are scheduled during the current day. It may be timeconsuming because the user may have to open a variety of folders to view the most relevant information or data. These folders may be locally stored and maintained or may be spread out across a large data network, such as the global Internet. Thus, the user would be left having to constantly navigate the user's online local and remote storage and switch amongst the numerous folders within which the user has relevant information.
Additionally, it may be time-consuming for a user to obtain an information summary because the user may have to launch individual programs to access and manipulate such important information. Once the user has launched the individual programs, the user is forced to spend time switching between individual programs when attempting to modify or manipulate the information.
Information management programs have attempted to solve these problems in a variety of ways. Traditional personal information management (PIM) computer programs may offer "static" summaries. These static summaries may be printed out but lack the ability to manipulate the information or data once displayed (i.e., printed) for the user. For example, a printed summary of task items for the current day may be printed out and viewed by the user. However, as the tasks are accomplished, the user is not able to simply check off the appropriate task item from the printed summary list and have data underlying the tasks list appropriately updated. Furthermore many traditional PIM computer programs do not have the ability to customize the information presented to the user or to perform "live" updating of the information.
Other application programs provide a type of customized summary view of important data or information. An example of such a customized summary view is a personalized home page for the World Wide Web (WWW) on the Internet. However, these summary views of important information lack the ability to manipulate the information directly from the summary view. If the underlying information within the customized summary view is provided by third party information providers (such as stock quotes, sports scores, or news headlines), there is no way for the user to manipulate the information. Even if manipulation of the information is possible, the user is still required to invoke the program module that created the information and to modify the information via the program module. As previously mentioned, this is undesirable because it is time-consuming and inefficient for the user. Use of such a summary view of important information may become cumbersome if a user desires to change or modify a number of different types of information.
Thus, there is a need for a system for generating a dynamic summary view of predetermined data (such as data which a user determined to be most relevant or important), which (1) allows manipulation of the data without invoking the program module that created the data, (2) is capable of "live" updating of the data within the dynamic summary view, and (3) is customizable on which data is determined to be important or relevant.